smartparens with strict mode in javascript

I am trying to configure smartparens to work with javascript, my config looks like this:

(use-package smartparens
  :ensure t
  :diminish smartparens-mode
  :commands (smartparens-mode
             smartparens-strict-mode)
  :config
  (progn
    (require 'smartparens-config)
    (smartparens-global-mode 1)))

If I am writing an if statement, I cannot add certain filters like <, > and others:

If I try and type these symbols, I get this error message:

We can not insert unbalanced closing delimiter in strict mode.

Is there a way round this?